


The Life And Times Of A Former Spy

by EmilieHardie



Series: Promise Of A Better Life [2]
Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilieHardie/pseuds/EmilieHardie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA snippets from the life of Alex 'Neal Caffrey' Rider. Because its hard to live a life of secrets. Not chronological.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Circle Of Life

**Author's Note:**

> These little snippets have been cluttering up my hard drive for a while now and I figured that I would post them. As to the main story, yes, I intend to continue it just as soon as I nail the ending so I have something to write towards.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal Caffrey comes full circle, losing the closest thing he had to a family to a bomb on a plane. And once again its pure luck that he wasn't on it.

The plane had blown up. The one that someone he loved was on, that he himself was meant to be on too.

  
It was like the past was reaching out to grab him, to mock him. Kate Moreau, the love of his life, had died the same way his parents had and, once again, Alex had survived because he wasn't on the plane when he was meant to be.

  
So, if his hands were shaking, he had a bloody good reason for it.

  
He could put on a good face as he was fake-robbing the bank but then he had always been good at hiding what he was really feeling. He had been a spy and a child soldier and a conman and a traitor; there was nothing that he couldn't hide. The truth was that Alex was feeling cornered. He was tethered to New York by something more powerful than a simple anklet. All the friendships that he made and the good work that they had done reminded him that once he had fought the good fight. Besides, if he ran now that it was clear someone was after him, then he would be leaving all his friends unprotected.

  
The plan of action was simple: find out who killed Kate. Find out what they know, which Neal could easily do with his talents as both a spy and a conman. Demonstrate how he had managed to acquire a four digit body count before his eighteenth birthday.

  
Oh, and, on the side, solve crimes and stop Peter from realising that there was anything going on with him.

  
Easy, really.


	2. If I Spy A Crocodile...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neal Caffrey had hidden depths. Unfortunately, he was less like a lake and more like a slow, still river with Alex Rider lurking in those depths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was very nearly the next chapter of the story proper, except that it veered wildly off track and got philosophical. Hopefully it is enlightening about how Alex stripped out the better and kinder parts of himself as the basis for the Neal persona. Basically, what's left of 'Alex' are the parts that made him an effective spy and far less hesitant to kill than normal people, even if he dressed it up.  
> Basically, what's left of Alex is not that different than a sociopathic killer. Its just that the good parts of his personailty are still in the driver's seat, just under the name Neal Caffrey.

Ghovat.

It was a good thing that Peter knew just how inappropriately pleased Neal could be or else he might how called unwanted attention when he learned they were going after the Ghost. Though he couldn't actually claim that he had been preparing for a situation when he would have to work closely with someone who was a little too observant, he hadn't planned that far ahead.

Neal Caffrey had just been born of the need for Alex to have fun, let loose and take advantage of all the skills that he had in ways that didn't leave a trail of bodies and devastation in his wake. In many ways, Neal Caffrey was the flip side of Alex Rider. The one charmed people in the light while the other spied and killed by night.

But a case with murder and models and infamous forgers? That was a case for both Alex and Neal.

As the cases went by, it became clear that Neal always did his best when Alex was there, mixed into the background, whispering into Neal's ear just how these guys thought. Alex knew the darkness that lurked in the hearts of some of these criminals nastier than Neal in a way Neal never could. He knew how they'd react if they knew Peter was packing, even if the agent made a particularly constipated looking bodyguard.

At first, Neal didn't slip up. He pretended to be freaked out by dead bodies, shaken by attempted shootings. He went after Kate and lived Neal Caffrey's life, the life of a boxed crook, of a conman in love. But the longer he stayed, the more he slipped up. It was little things, like his slip up in Les Joyaux when he told Peter that he had been to Buckingham Palace even though Neal Caffrey had never been to England, and he had been a little too sanguine in dangerous situations.

Then he jumped out of a building onto a baker's awning. Luckily, Peter was so preoccupied by Neal escaping that he missed it.

Alex had conned Peter without even meaning to and that con was called Neal Caffrey.

Running from the FBI was easier that it had been before because Neal Caffrey was unravelling, the stress of trying to find Kate bring Alex to the surface. It didn't matter that he was cleared of Fowler's frame job, Alex Rider had smelt blood and the old spy, soldier, assassin rose to lurk just beneath the surface.

It was his turn to draw blood.


	3. All The People You Used To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has been more people than anyone should but he will keep going for as long as he can. Because there is one life he has always been running from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a drabble that's a bit more structured than my failed attempts at the second chapter of The Caffrey Identity. Also, I've been doing a lot of research on Classical Greece for an original novel I plan to start writing soon, which is why Greek tragedy pops up. Since the novel involves reincarnation, I've also been doing a lot of thinking about past lives and reincarnation, again for this novel, which is why this is a philosophical look at what Neal/Alex's propensity to get so deeply into character does to him.

 

“It all just disappears, doesn't it? Everything you are gone in a moment, like breath on a mirror [...] But, times change, and so must I [...] We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives. And that's okay, that's good. You've gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when The Doctor was me.” - Eleventh Doctor, _Doctor Who_

 

“I've had many faces, many lives. But I don't admit to all of them. There's one life I've tried very hard to forget.” - The Doctor, _Doctor Who_

 

_///////_

 

Here's what they never tell you about becoming different people: it ages you as though you had lived all those lives.

Some days, Neal envies all those people who simply take a new alias but never really change, never really become that person. They are more easily found out, it's true, but then they never know what its like to have lived ten, twenty, a hundred lives and to not have a single one end happily.

Neal knows more of tragedies than Shakespeare, than Aeschylus, than Sophocles. He likes to think that the Ancient Greeks could have made something compelling of a man who lived countless lives but could never get one right. In his darkest moments, he might even have said that he had been cursed by the gods.

He knew better.

His was the life of a man who would always be bound by the first life he had lived, and it had not been a good one. He was running from that life, each day and for all the days to come. He was running but no one could run from themselves forever. He knew that, and he ran from that too.

Every time the past caught up to one of his previous identities, he remembered that not even Neal Caffrey would last forever. Each time a life had outlived its usefulness, he remembered all the other, luckier lives that had been discarded, nothing more than dust on the wind.

But he remembered them all.

He remembered all the good times those lives had had, even if he had never actually experienced them. He celebrated them, his heart lifting with a joy he seldom had reason to live. Their kids, their wives, their triumphs. He had told Peter once that those aliases were people to him. That was true but it wasn't the whole story. They were real to him but they were not other people. They were him, at least for a while. They were him and all too often they were gone in an instant and, in that same instant, Neal died.

When he and Mozzie held their send-offs, Neal felt all too keenly that it was his funeral.

Each time he took on another life, the person he was inside became twenty, thirty years older in an instant. The person he was deep down, too deep for memories or stories or even names to reach was old beyond measure and no amount of outward charming smiles could make him feel any younger.

Each life became harder and harder to live and he dreaded the day when it would all prove to be too much. The day he could no longer live another life would be the start, the start of a countdown to an inevitable conclusion. Because his lives would not stop ending just because he couldn't start any more. They would keep going, keep stopping, keep dying, until there was only one life.

One life.

The first life.

The only one he wanted to forget.

Alex Rider.

One more time before the end.

 


End file.
